Posts with the category ‘Europe’


Lights, Action & Bring Your Cameras to These Winter Celebrations

November 25, 2022

Nestled in the corner of a city park, a short walk from subway lines, schools, bodegas and falafel shops, New York’s famed Brooklyn Botanic Garden is an urban oasis. It is a place, New York’s arts commissioner Laurie Cumbo says, where New Yorkers come to breathe. While that is undoubtedly true, convincing people to visit when the days get cold and night creeps on early is a challenge. For the second year the BBG (as the Brookyn Botanic is known), is creating “a new season,” according to Kathryn Glass, vice president of marketing for the garden. On November 16th, the switch was flipped, illuminating one… Read More…


Can Your Next Vacation Make You Smarter?

August 19, 2021

Zermatt, Switzerland – It’s a no-brainer that visiting museums and historic sites can make a vacation an educational experience. But kinetic activities, say a heart-rate elevating rafting trip or a tour by bike can also make us smarter. People who immerse themselves in nature get other benefits too, including enhanced memory, cognitive function and creativity, a feeling of well-being and bonding opportunities with like-minded fellow travelers. That science backed up what I’d already believed to be true was liberating. No longer did I have to feel guilty about choosing to go snorkeling instead of an edifying but more sedentary outing like visiting a local landmark…. Read More…


Let European Ban Trigger More Responsible Travel

June 24, 2020

Would-be summer travelers to Europe will likely have to keep their plans on hold as the European Union considers a ban on international travelers from the United States, Brazil and Russia. Composed of 27 European countries from Ireland in the west to Romania in the east, the EU was scheduled to re-open its borders to international visitors next week on the first of July. New and seemingly unabated coronavirus infections in the US, Brazil and Russia appear to be prompting EU decision-makers to consider anew the risk of importing infections into Europe.  In a sign of how much has changed over the past few months,… Read More…


Postcards from the Edge of Coronavirus

March 24, 2020

It is an old tradition that travelers send postcards to loved ones back home. With the Coronavirus putting a halt to travel and creating a near-universal sense of isolation and fear, I propose the reverse. From my home in America, I am sending digital postcards to some of the people I have met on my travels. Each in their way has taught me we have much in common, no matter what country we call home. To: Doreen Sekento Kumum in Maasi Mara, Kenya Habari Doreen, Thanks once again for teaching me the very basics of stringing beads during my visit to the Karen Blixen Camp…. Read More…


Exhausted in a Gladiola Field, I Find Dutch Samaritans on a Bicycle Built For Two

September 12, 2019

  Intending no disrespect Google Maps, but could you please stop predicting how long it will take me to pedal 30 miles in Holland? I’m biking because I want to linger: see the sites, smell the roses, dig my toes into the sand on Holland’s expansive beaches all of which I CANNOT DO if I am racing across the landscape at 15 miles per hour. That said, when an expected two-and-a-half-hour ride from Rotterdam to Zeeland turned into something much longer, my energy level was so depleted that I started to worry I would not/could not make it to my hotel for the night.  Then… Read More…


The Many Reasons To Rise With the Sun in Cadiz

August 12, 2019

  Nestled low among mid-rise, colonial-era buildings in the heart of the old city of Cadiz, my rental apartment had just one problem; the rising sun did not enter my bedroom window until well past 8:00. As I’d chosen to stay in Southern Spain in February to escape the New England winter I did not want to lose a moment of daylight just because my sun-sensitive body clock was tricked into thinking it was still too early to get up. A month later, (having surrendered to an alarm clock) I was doubly convinced. There is too much to enjoy in this historic city by the… Read More…


Painter of Storks Delivers Message of Migration

February 16, 2019

To the delight of many, the White Storks have returned to Puerto de la Santa Maria and few are happier about it than Francisco Prainz. I saw the birds and met the man who is documenting their annual fair weather residence here while riding my bike on a sunny afternoon. A dozen of the storks were clucking loudly and stomping around their enormous nests atop the city’s 15th Century Priory Church and I joined several others who were gawking at them. White Storks, I have learned, have quite a big fan base according to the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology. “In Europe it brings newborns, in Mesopotamia it… Read More…


Around the World, the Holiday Season Transforms With Sugar, Lights and Love

December 12, 2017

The great thing about holidays is the transformation of the ordinary.  Christmas pageants transform ordinary folks into Bethlehem villagers. Lights transform homes into dazzling displays. Butter, flour and powdered sugar are transformed into something delectable (and even thematic). It is a time of transformation after all, especially for Christians who celebrate the incarnation of God through the birth of Jesus. Over the years, I’ve collected photos of the various ways people around the world decorate and celebrate from Ethiopia to England.   So I was especially pleased to see in my inbox today, these holiday-themed photos from hotels in the U.S.A. who are turning the… Read More…


Iceland Bared, Three Ways to See What It’s Made Of

October 22, 2016

“If you get lost in the forest in Iceland, just stand up,” or so the joke goes. Iceland has many natural wonders, but forests are not among them. You are much more likely to get lost among the volcanic rocks which pile atop each other over vast distances. Covered by snow in winter, lichen in fall and awash in purple Lupina in the summer, the bones of the face of Iceland have a seasonal sameness. I’ve visited Iceland five times in as many years, including a visit in July for this story for The New York Times. But after a conference here this week, I took two days and… Read More…


Prostitute and Papacy Entwined in Lake Constance History

July 6, 2016

She is thirty feet high and weighs 36 thousand pounds and every inch of her voluptuous and barely-concealed anatomy is alluring – except perhaps for the two naked and wizened old men who sit in the palms of each of her upraised hands, one a pope the other an emperor. The statute of the courtesan Imperia by German artist Peter Lenk is not just the most “photographed attraction” in the lakeside resort town of Constance (Konstanz in German) in the state of Baden-Wuerttemberg, it is the only public sculpture to so conspicuously memorialize a prostitute. Revolving at a rate of once every three minutes to display… Read More…


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